


Finals Flu

by thatfamoushappyending (betsytheoven)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Finals Week, Gen, Sick Holster, Stress, Undiagnosed Test Anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 06:39:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4009696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betsytheoven/pseuds/thatfamoushappyending
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone knows Ransom doesn't handle finals well. </p><p>This time, Holster doesn't either, but that probably has to do with the flu.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finals Flu

**Author's Note:**

> For theoriginalclone, who is struggling through finals and being sick, the actual worst combo ever. 
> 
> (My apologies for the unedited state of this fic, it was kind of random and pointless?)

Everyone expected Rans to have a finals week meltdown. It always happened, especially before biology-related tests, with the stacks of vocabulary notecards stretching taller than Lardo.

 

No one expected Holster to have a finals week meltdown. Samwell’s Economic Seminar on Health Finances and the International Cost of Health was known to be challenging, but no one expected it to completely take over Holster’s life post-playoffs.

 

He was turning in a new report every week, spending more of his time in the library with Rans doing actual work instead of on reddit. His final was a three part final, with an essay due the week before on research that he had done, and then an essay was due in class on the day of the final to discuss his findings and why they were significant, and finally they had a final test that measured whether or not they knew vocabulary and the general status of International Health.

 

Holster was dead.

 

He actually probably would have been fine, had he not gotten sick the weekend before finals week. With a case of the Finals Flu though, Holster wasn’t sure he was going to survive the week.

 

“What in the actual hell, man? I normally get sick after playoffs and then I am the picture of perfect health through finals!” he blew his nose loudly and slammed his head against the Haus kitchen table, only to recoil a moment later from the throbbing pain in his head.

 

“You’re more stressed than normal, Holster. It’s probably the stress of senior year and all that terrifying nonsense that I refuse to think about.” Bitty bustled around the kitchen, making something on the stovetop.

 

“But I don’t stress! I am the owner of like 90% of the chill on this team!” Holster yelled, or at least tried to.

 

Bitty hummed and placed a bowl of fresh chicken noodle soup in front of Holster. “Just eat some soup, and get some sleep. No sense working yourself up over this.”

 

Holster grumbled a bit, but he knew Bitty would only mother him into submission.

 

After eating more soup that he probably needed, Holster trudged up the neverending stairs up to the attic, only to find Rans muttering to himself on the top bunk, with note cards and Red Bull cans spilling over the sides.

 

“Rans bro, I hate to tell you this, but I have contracted a case of the Finals Flu. I don’t want you to get it, but I think I already contaminated this room.” with a sniffle, Holster tried to push himself up against the wall furthest from the bunk.

 

“Bitty texted me, I have four packets of Emergen-C in me and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t even notice if I got sick at this point, so don’t sweat it Holtzy.” Rans looked up from his notes, “Well, you’re already sweating, but just focus on that health seminar final. Your grades are pretty much already locked in for all the other classes, so just... do a little work and get some sleep?”

 

Holster blinked. Rans drained the last of the Red Bull can in his hands.

 

“The hell, bro?”

 

Rans laughed, “It’s my senior year and most of my finals already happened last week. I have two tests at the end of the week though, so give me a few days and I’ll be back to hiding under tables.”

 

With a grunt, he hopped off the bed and opened the attic door, “But you, my bro, look like you’re about to die.”

 

“Just trying to join the Haus ghosts.” Holster shrugged.

 

Rans narrowed his eyes at his best friend, “I’m going downstairs to get you a damp washcloth for that fever you seem to be fighting. And if you die, I will be able to prove that there are no Haus ghosts. Or ghosts. At all.”

 

Holster laughed, but it only turned into a cough attack. He ended up crouched on the floor, sucking in shallow, interrupted breaths. Rans sighed and went downstairs as quickly as possible.

 

Somehow Holster made it to the bed, but then the rest of the day goes fuzzy from there. He remembers a cold pressure to his face at one point and a few faces, but beyond that, he wasn’t aware of much happening around him.

 

When he woke up, the attic as dark, save the string of lights that was always on above the bunk bed. Holster panicked a bit, and scrambled to pull his phone out of his jeans to check the day. It was 3:12 am on the Monday of finals week and Holster was legitimately contemplating getting up to work on the essay due Wednesday.

 

He scooted himself to the edge of the bunk, only to hear, “Go the fuck back to sleep, Adam Birkholtz, or I swear I will make your life miserable.”

 

“Already miserable, Rans. Go back to sleep.”

 

With a groan, Rans muttered something, but Holster took it to mean he was going back to sleep. So he plodded across the attic towards his desk to open his laptop, even though his back and shoulders were aching like he was in pre-season workouts again.

 

“ ‘ello? Yeah, sorry to call at this hour, Jack. But Holster has the flu and is trying to work on an essay right now.”   
  
Holster dropped his head to the desk, only making his flu-induced headache worse. Oh no, the disappointed Jack speech was coming.

 

Holster’s only warning was a quick, “bro,” before a phone was flying at Holster. Thankfully he caught it, but he hesitated a moment before putting it up to his ear.

 

“Hi Jack.”

 

There was a soft sigh on the other end of the line, “Holster, the hell are you doing?”

 

“Well you see Jack,” Holster tried to muster up a smile to convince both himself and their old captain, “I have a huge essay and final coming up on Wednesday and--”

 

“And you have the flu. Whatever essay you try to write is going to be shit, and you’re just going to waste time having to rewrite it. Go to sleep, before I tell Bittle you’re awake.”

 

Holster glared at his roommate and nodded to no one in particular. “Fine, Jack. But only because you’re a famous hockey player who is going to buy me an awesome graduation present.”

 

Jack chuckled, “Sure, Holster. Now go sleep before you get any worse, you sound like my grandfather.”

 

* * *

 

 

He woke up in the morning feeling, well... not perfect, but better. He joined the rest of the Haus downstairs in time to enjoy the brunch that Bitty made after his last final of his junior year (they grow up so fast), and then he tagged along with Dex and Nursey to Norris.

 

Four hours later, Holster had a finished paper and only one test standing between him and graduation.

 

He abandoned Dex and Nursey at Norris after Bitty send him a text saying he had baked a fresh Rhubarb pie and was saving it for him. Once he was back at the Haus, he sat down at the kitchen table with a stack of note cards, his laptop, and a fork. For every note card he finished, he earned a bite of pie (or pizza, after he cleaned up the pie).

 

His fever decided to rear its head again around ten o’clock that night, so he was ushered back up to the attic, note cards left haphazardly on the table. It took him a few hours to succumb to sleep, various vocab words haunting his every thought. If this was how Ransom felt before every test (minus the flu-related aches and pains), Holster had no idea how his best friend had survived four years of this hell.

 

The smell of bacon and something sweet baking downstairs pulled Holster from his sleep, and he stumbled downstairs without much thought. He sat down at the table and stared at his note cards, a sense of dread filling him at the impending doom that was his International Health seminar final that day.

 

Bitty placed a plate with cinnamon rolls and bacon in front of him, along with a few glasses of orange juice.

 

“Drink all of those before you even think about doing anything else.” Bitty’s stern look made Holster smile a bit because really, that boy could not be intimidating if he tried.

 

“Aw, Bitty, I’m really feeling a lot better--”

 

“Nice try. With Ransom in freak-out mode over his Biophysical Neurobiology final now, you need someone to make sure you don’t die before you can actually walk across that stage.” Bitty placed another glass, this time filled with water, in front of Holster with an expectant look.

 

Holster glanced under the table, and sure enough there was Ransom curled under the table, with his textbook.

 

With a sigh, Holster powered through the absurd amounts of orange juice, before studying until his afternoon exam. It was rather anticlimactic, with him finishing the exam within an hour, but Bitty was waiting outside his class with a pie (and a fork) so it could have been worse.

  
The final test was done, and Holster was finally feeling better and all he wanted to do was drink himself into the ground, but when he walked into the kitchen, he saw Ransom was still rocking back and forth under the table. So he sat down at the table, threw his feet up on the table (ignoring Bitty’s screech) and chatted with Bitty. It all felt just like any other year for just a few hours, Ransom freaking out about tests, instead of being calm because he was almost done. Holster was relaxed and mostly-healthy, instead of drowning in note cards and hacking up a lung. Finals week in the Haus was like a concentrated version of Hell, but if he got moments of peace--chirping Bitty while he worked at the stove, occasionally checking on Rans under the table, and trying not to fall as he leaned his chair back-- well, he could survive one brutal week for this. 


End file.
